I love trading/drafting aspect of progressive leagues because it makes it challenging to keep teams competitive. However, the draft process is long and keeping track of picks, owners complaining about trades, etc. can be eliminated. Here is an idea for a progressive that eliminates that and lets you own your favorite team.

- You pick a Franchise - These will be unique.
- NEW EDIT - We will start post War...1945 Season and Forward.
- You can only use players in the years played for the franchise. Then you lose them.
- NEW EDIT - You must either use the rookie/first year or the 2nd year with your franchise. (i.e. No starting someone in their 5th year with you.)
- Once the player/year selected, you must progress him from that year. Example. 1994 Greg Maddux, the next is 1995, no going back.
- Split Seasons - If a player has a split season (meaning 2 or more teams) the team he started the season in RL gets him. The acquiring team has to wait until the next season.
- KEEPERS - You must keep 20 players each year so you can only "add/replace" 5 each year. Further examples:
1. If someone leaves your team in RL (including retirement), you lose them and they can be replaced by someone from your franchise.
- If you have >5 attrition (retirement, IR, leaves your team) you can replace them all. However, you will not be able to cut anyone.
- If you have <5 attrition, you can "cut" up to 2 players total. Keep in mind you lose those guys forever. "Cut" means they have available years remaining with your team but you choose to forgo them.
- Normal IR rules apply. If someone sits out an entire season and returns to your team, you can "protect them".
- Park Selection - You can only use a park your team actually played in but can use any park from 1945 forward.


Many of the rest of the normal league rules are not needed (Vetos, Player Disputes, Park Selections.)

Bottom line is that it skips an annual draft, there are no trades because you cannot have someone that wasn't on your team. You build your team and submit and can do research/strategize for your future teams during the season when you have time. Said differently, tanking is eliminated because there is no draft. Unfair trade disputes are eliminated because there are no trades. This will be all about who can pick the right guys at the right time. That is skill.

What am I missing (feedback welcome) or please indicate your interest below. NOT picking franchises yet. Starting 1945 to get past all the Ruth/Gehrig/Big Train/WWII issues.

Interested Owners
1. Creeper
2. Landry19
3. FatGuyRd
4. Mr_Cubbie
5. RazorHawg
6.
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8.
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11.
12.

Franchise leagues are tough because some are just so much better than others. My 2 cents

This league will be different. There are many leagues / progressives and themes that allow you to load up for a few seasons. We are starting in 1945 to avoid the crazy good guys who were concentrated within 2-3 franchises. We are keeping the teams to 12 to ensure all owners can get deep franchises and we are looking at 10-20 years max...to avoid burnout that some long running progessives experience with owners simply wanting a change.

In one of my progressives we are in Season 22...I have made 102 trades MYSELF and never lost track. Its not hard, this progressive would just be something different and eliminate the work to track trades and chase folks down for drafts. Thats all.

No. You dont have to use rookie season.
Yes. You can add to your team if he comes back but NOT if you ever cut him.

All this assumes you would have Cubs as your team.

Its hard to use each franchises full seasons because teams like the Yankees have tons more years than say Seattle or SD, so you should limits years

DH? Interleague Play? Stadiums? Are we talking 6 AL and 6 NL teams or it doesn’t matter you will just align any 12 teams?

My two cents;

1) If you want this to be long running, you need a way to bring back guys, otherwise you'll get a lot of 'drop outs' once the cupboard is bare...

2) Why not start w/ rookie/first yr w/ franchise yrs??? And you MUST use all their yrs (w/ your team)??? Then maybe a 5 season wait til they can rejoin...I think this might eliminate the need for a salary cap/points structure...Would also require more planning...

3) Like the 1945 start...


DBP

As an example of how I run leagues, I think everyones opinion matters and have good questions. I will try and answer some more as I want to vet the rules before diving in.

1. With only 12 franchises, I doubt we will run out of players. (Yanks, RedSox, Cards, Dodgers, Reds, White Sox, Giants, Cubs, etc.) All have plenty of years and players. Once we get going a few seasons, if owners want to draft a 2nd franchise for the newer ones (Royals, Pads, Rockies, Blue Jays, etc.) we can vote on it after a couple of seasons. Also Braves would also be Milwaukee, not just ATL...Senators/Expos/Nats would be an interesting combo also.
2. Alignment. We could do some cool stuff with that to divide up rivals. Yanks/Sox, Dodgers/Giants, Cards/Cubs, etc. Again 12 teams means 2 6 team leagues.
3. Salary cap / Contract points may not be necessary if we start in 1945. I was worried about the Ruth/Gehrig/Williams years.
4. I can go either way with DH. Not sure it has a material bearing on the league. If you have a strong opinion, let me know.
5. Stadiums would be whatever anyone wants to use...entire WIS database.
6. I like balanced interleague play to ensure the best records are earned vs. not playing the strong teams in the other league.
7. Clarification on 20 roster keepers. When you have guys leave your team, you can replace them. If you have 7 leaving, you can pick 7 more but cannot cut additional. If you have 3 leave your franchise you can cut 2 more and replace them but you cannot cut more than that. (Pick Wisely) The point here is no wholesale tanking/rebuilds allowed.
8. Dilli has a point on "drop outs". I would think this could run 10-20 seasons easily. At that point folks may get tired of it.

Keep em coming and let me know if you are interested or if you have any showstoppers.

1. Personally don’t like DH. I thought it’s first year in the NL was a failure. It was a place to hide old guys who are bad fielders, injured players, and utility players.

2. That said sign me up.

I think you will have a problem I had in the old geography league, which also allowed owners to pick any player from history born in that state:

The first season everyone picks the all-time all stars. Once those careers are done, owners will leave because they are not interested in a team based around Joe Pepitone instead of Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle and Dimaggio.

Think about ways around that. Your idea of a salary cap is one. There may be other ways to do it.

Re italyprof- no more then 4 players from anyone decade? Just an idea.

Posted by italyprof on 11/28/2020 1:32:00 PM (view original):
I think you will have a problem I had in the old geography league, which also allowed owners to pick any player from history born in that state:

The first season everyone picks the all-time all stars. Once those careers are done, owners will leave because they are not interested in a team based around Joe Pepitone instead of Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle and Dimaggio.

Think about ways around that. Your idea of a salary cap is one. There may be other ways to do it.

Everyone has an opinion and they ALL matter. This is meant to be something different therefore will feel uncomfortable for some but here is my response.

• There are plenty of other Franchise/Progressive leagues with Ruth/Gehrig/Dimaggio. Not looking to duplicate that.
• Those mega stars will be ineligible anyway if we start in 1945. Even Mays/Mantle were not that impactful vs. those guys.
• Burning through great players will happen for every franchise to some extent but at different paces depending on when you start a player. If you start him 4 years into a 10 year career you will lose him sooner and his great years may not align with the other franchise stars.
• Here are other things to consider:
  • Your team will get good players (if only for a couple of years) when they play for your team. (Clemens, Henderson, Verlander, Seaver, Barry Bonds, etc.) who moved during their career peaks.
  • I have discussed at some point adding a 2nd franchise to each of the 12 teams to draw from. That alone solves it
  • This will force you to think through your selections without the quirks.
  • Have said this league will likely go 10-20 seasons. Likely not looking to go 30-40.

Love all the feedback and keep it coming. If we get this off the ground, it will NOT be like other leagues (long running or not) where you can basically guess exactly who is on the team before you actually see it. Will also consider awards for Most Wins by a Franchise or player vs. titles.

Padres take P Ron Romanick

I'm game. Agree that off-seasons with drafting and trading can be agonizingly slow at times - and difficult to monitor and track when you have some owners who are less committed/engaged than others. I think you still get your strategy fix here when you build your team before each season. However, I really enjoy trading so that may be a drawback for some who might be interested. Although I'm not sure that's something that can be changed based on the spirit of the theme.

Fully agree on the recommendation to only allow post-1945 seasons for players.

italyprof makes a good point as well - although probably not as big of a hurdle if you're only looking to go for 10-20 seasons. Otherwise, I would support the suggestion of being able to bring guys back after a certain amount of time has passed. That could also be an enticement to help recruit a replacement owner if someone leaves. (Example): Here is the available team AND you can bring back Mickey Mantle again beginning next season. Bet that team isn't without an owner for long!